


Cats Are More Trouble Than They’re Worth (Except When They’re Not)

by mithrel



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blanket Permission, M/M, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur finds a stray cat and takes it home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cats Are More Trouble Than They’re Worth (Except When They’re Not)

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes from Discworld: Wyrd Sisters, as well as Macbeth. References to Discworld: Guards, Guards! both by Terry Pratchett.

Arthur had just finished putting his rubbish bags in the skip, when he heard a meow.

He looked down to see a small grey tabby cat looking up at him. It bumped its head against his legs, and he reached down to stroke it absently.

When he headed back to his flat, the cat followed him.

 _Shit._ “Go on, shoo!” he said, waving his hands at the cat, who he could swear was looking at him with an amused expression. He turned away and walked a few steps more. The cat followed him.

“Look, you can’t come home with me. My lease doesn’t allow pets,” he told the cat, then realised what an idiot he was being, talking to a cat as if it could understand him.

 _It’s the middle of winter,_ part of him said.

 _I’ll get fined if it’s found,_ he retorted. _Besides, it’s probably got all kinds of diseases._

 _It looks healthy,_ the part of him inclined to worry about the plight of helpless things replied.

_It probably lives somewhere near here, then; better to leave it alone._

He tried, but the cat had other ideas. It followed him up the stairs, and, though he tried to keep his foot over the door, darted into his flat.

“Dammit!”

In typical cat fashion, it curled up on the softest chair in his living room, getting hair all over it.

Arthur picked it up by the scruff of the neck, and, ignoring its yowl of protest, set it outside again. “Go away!”

After a moment, there was a scratching on the closed door. Arthur put up with it for a few minutes, then groaned and went back to the door.

“Alright, come on!”

The cat came inside again.

“But don’t get comfortable!” he warned it. “I intend to find your owner as soon as possible!” The cat wound around his legs, purring contentedly.

***

He’d put down a bowl of water, and opened a tin of tuna for the cat, since he didn’t have anything else. He went to get some proper cat food and a catbox and litter. He hoped the cat knew what it was for, or his landlord would throw a fit.

He filled the catbox and put it down, and the cat used it, so that was one less worry he had.

He made up fliers: “CAT FOUND”, with his phone number but no picture.

By the time he’d posted the fliers, it was getting dark.

When he’d got ready for bed and lain down, the cat jumped up on the bed and curled up at his feet.

He nudged it onto the floor. “Go away.”

But the cat jumped back up, and after repeating the push-off-jump-back-up routine twice, he sighed and said, “Fine, stay there. But just for tonight!”

The cat settled itself on the bed, purring.

***

He was woken up early by the cat yowling over and over. He didn’t know what it wanted, but it wouldn’t shut up, and when he got up it ran out of the room. He stumbled out to the kitchen to find it standing next to the food bowl and looked up at him expectantly.

He sighed, picked up the bowl, opened one of the tins of cat food he’d bought, and put the bowl back down. It began to eat immediately.

The cat was an annoyance. It jumped up on the table while he was eating breakfast and knocked over his orange juice. Whenever he wanted to sit down somewhere, it was there first. It was constantly underfoot.

At some point he picked it up and checked under its tail. “You,” he told the cat, “are a pest and a menace.”

She just purred at him and licked his hand.

***

Over the next few days the cat grew on him. He knew better than to name her, calling her simply “cat” or “you” or (when she scratched up his furniture or dropped a dead vole on the carpet–and where _that_ had come from he had no clue, since he never let her out) “you bloody… _nnggh!_ ” She slept at the foot of his bed at night, and curled up in his lap when he was reading. No one had responded to the fliers, and he was beginning to think no one would.

One day, a week after he’d found the cat, his phone rang.

“Yes?”

“Um…yeah, I think you might have my cat?” came a nervous voice over the phone.

“Possibly. What’s it look like?”

“Um, grey tabby, with green eyes and a kink in her tail?”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. I’ll be glad to get rid of it–the damn thing’s a terror!” But he felt a pang, despite all the trouble the cat had caused him.

The man on the other end laughed. “Can I come get her now?”

Arthur shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, and gave the man his address.

***

There was a knock on his door about a half hour later. He opened it to see a skinny guy with startlingly blue eyes, a mop of black hair and large ears standing on the doorstep, with a cat carrier in his hand.

He coughed. “Yeah, I didn’t introduce myself over the phone, sorry. I’m Merlin.”

Arthur stared at him.

Merlin sighed. “Yeah, I know–” he began.

“No, no, it’s just…that’s a hell of a coincidence!”

Merlin’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“I’m Arthur.”

Merlin laughed. “I can’t believe this! My cat gets picked up by a guy named Arthur?”

Arthur grinned. “Yeah, like I said. Anyway, come on in.”

Merlin stepped into his flat, looking around curiously. There wasn’t much to see: a sofa and a couple of armchairs; small table, which he put the cat carrier on; TV; and several bookcases, their shelves stacked three deep.

“You should put a collar on her.”

“Have _you_ ever tried to keep a collar on a cat?” Merlin shot back. “”It doesn’t work. She’s not supposed to go outside, but she decided to stage a jailbreak when I got the mail, and was gone before I could catch her!”

Arthur laughed.

Naturally, the cat was nowhere to be seen.

“Figures,” Arthur grumbled. “When I don’t want her, she’s underfoot, and when I do there’s no sign of her.”

“Well, she’s a cat,” Merlin replied, as if that explained everything.

“Wait here.”

Arthur searched his flat, and finally found the cat hiding, naturally, under his bed, which she’d never done before. He crawled under and dragged her out, thankful she dug her claws into the carpet instead of his arm.

“Alright, you devil in feline shape, you’re going back to your owner!”

The cat looked at him and bumped her head against his hand. Arthur sighed, and scratched behind her ears. The cat closed its eyes and purred.

He brought her out and handed her to Merlin. Merlin’s eyes went gooey and he held her up to his face. “Whosa naughty girl, Iggy?”

“‘Iggy’?” Arthur repeated, the corners of his mouth twitching. _He’s babytalking a cat. At least I never did_ that!

Merlin coughed, the tips of his ears turning red. “Well I call her Iggy. Her name’s actually Igraine.”

“Igraine,” Arthur repeated, deadpan.

“Yes.” Merlin glared at him, his chin raised, and Arthur forbore to comment on the fact that a man named Merlin had chosen to name his cat Igraine. “What do I owe you?” Merlin continued, reaching into his pocket.

“Don’t worry about it, it was no trouble,” Arthur said hastily, thinking of the clawed furniture and the cat hair all over everything.

Merlin raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Only…” he stopped.

“Only what?” Merlin asked.

“Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“You took care of my cat for a week. What do you want?”

“Could I come and see her sometime?” Arthur asked, cringing at how it sounded. _And now you’ve proven yourself to be either insane or a total creep. Well done._

Merlin stared at him for a moment, but then he smiled. “They do grow on you, don’t they?”

“Like fungus,” Arthur grumbled, and Merlin laughed.

“Sure, no problem. Do you have some paper?”

“One sec.” Arthur went into his room and dug around until he found a pad and pen and brought it out.

Merlin put down the cat (Arthur refused to think of her as either Iggy _or_ Igraine) who wound around his legs, and scribbled something on the pad before handing it back to Arthur. “There’s my address and phone number. Call before you come over, OK?”

“Uh…yeah,” Arthur mumbled.

Arthur watched, with his mouth falling open, as Merlin upended the cat carrier against the table, picked up the cat under one arm, and lowered her into it, using his other hand to push her hind feet in.

Closing the cat carrier and turning it over, Merlin caught sight of his expression. “Only way to get her in. And it doesn’t hurt her.”

“If you say so.”

“Thanks again,” Merlin said, as Arthur showed him to the door.

“It was no trouble. Really.”

As Merlin headed off down the stairs, Arthur heard him say, “I am locking you in my room and never letting you out.” Arthur laughed and shut the door.

***

A week went by before he called Merlin. He’d been debating doing it at all, but finally decided, what the hell? Merlin might think he was strange, but from what Arthur’d seen, Merlin wasn’t exactly normal.

So he called him.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, Merlin, it’s Arthur. OK if I come over?” He was glad his phone didn’t have a cord, or else he’d be fidgeting with it.

He could hear the smile in Merlin’s voice. “Yeah, sure. I was wondering if I’d ever hear from you again.”

“I’ll be over in a bit,” Arthur said and hung up.

He was surprised, when he got to the address Merlin had given him, to find not a block of flats but a small house.

He rechecked the address before going and ringing the doorbell. As the door opened, a grey blur shot for the gap between Arthur’s legs.

“Oh no you don’t!” he said, grabbing the cat and dropping it back inside. “You’ve caused enough trouble already!”

Merlin quickly shut the door. “Thanks.”

“I thought you were going to keep her in your room,” Arthur said.

Merlin shrugged sheepishly. “I was but, well…you know what they’re like.”

“Yeah, I do,” Arthur said, smiling ruefully. “I didn’t want to keep her, since my lease doesn’t allow pets, but she insisted. Then she ended up sleeping on my bed.”

Merlin nodded and laughed. “You had cats before? You seem to know a lot about them.”

Arthur sighed and shook his head. “Some of my friends did. My father thought pets were ‘frivolous.’”

Merlin frowned. “They’re not. They actually help you live longer, you know.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that, although why clawed furniture, hair everywhere and dead animals dropped on the mat as trophies should be healthy is beyond me.”

“One of the mysteries of the universe,” Merlin intoned dramatically. Arthur swatted at him and Merlin ducked, grinning.

Arthur looked around the living room. It was quite a bit bigger than his own, but had the same sort of furniture. There was an extensive collection of DVDs in one bookcase, and a smaller one filled with well-thumbed books. “You can afford this?”

Merlin shrugged. “The rent’s pretty reasonable, and I’ve got a flatmate, although he’s out at the moment.”

Arthur tried to keep from looking at the bookcase, but Merlin noticed. “Well, go ahead,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

Most of the books seemed to be fantasy, with some science fiction. “Figures you’d read this stuff,” he said, waving around a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Merlin snatched it back, cradling it protectively and glaring as though Arthur had insulted his mother. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Arthur said quickly.

“‘This stuff.’ What do _you_ read, then?”

Arthur shifted. “Mostly mysteries.”

Merlin snorted.

“What?”

“And you criticise _my_ taste in books?”

“I don’t like fantasy!”

“Exactly how many fantasy books have you read?” Merlin demanded.

“Um…”

Merlin sighed. “Wait here,” he said, and disappeared down the hall.

Arthur gaped for a second, then sat down. The cat jumped up beside him and curled up on his lap and he stroked her absently.

Merlin returned in a moment and handed him a paperback. Arthur looked at it dubiously. “‘Wyrd Sisters’?”

“Give it a try,” Merlin coaxed him.

“Fine, if only because I know you won’t give up until you’ve converted me.”

Merlin looked at him sternly. “I don’t lend my books out lightly, you know. Be careful with it.”

Arthur nodded.

***

The book gathered dust in his living room for nearly a week before he decided to look at it.

_The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills._

_The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: “When shall we three meet again?”_

_There was a pause._

_Finally, another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: “Well, I can do next Tuesday.”_

What the hell? Arthur set the book aside, dragged a chair into his bedroom, and manhandled the box where he kept his old uni textbooks down from his closet. He pulled out the anthology of Shakespeare and riffled through it til he found Macbeth.  


Act 1, Scene 1

SCENE I. A desert place.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches

First Witch

When shall we three meet again  
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

  


Coincidence? Possibly. It was far more likely that it was intentional. He went back out to the living room and picked up the book again.

***

He finished the book in two days and then looked up the author. He had thirty-six novels in the series, some young adult, with two more due to release soon, as well as comics, short stories and even theatrical adaptations. Several of them involved the witches.

He called Merlin up. “Hey.”

“Arthur, hi. Did you look at the book yet?”

“Yeah.”

Merlin waited, then prompted him, “And?”

“It’s a parody of Macbeth.”

Merlin laughed. “Yeah, a couple of the witch books are fairly specific parodies. But never mind that, what did you think of it?”

“It was OK,” Arthur conceded.

“Uh-huh,” Merlin replied sceptically. “There’s a bunch of books in the series.”

“Are there?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah. Unfortunately, the author’s got Alzheimer’s.”

“Ouch,” Arthur winced. He hadn’t known that.

“Yeah. But there are still the books he’s already written.”

“And aren’t there two coming out within the next year or so?” _Crap._

“Ah- _ha!_ ” Merlin crowed. “You looked him up!”

“Yeah, I looked him up,” Arthur admitted. “So I’m assuming you have the rest of the series?”

“Uh-huh. You want to read it?”

***

Over the course of the next month, Arthur started working his way through the Discworld series. At first he borrowed Merlin’s books, but then he started buying his own copies.

He was over Merlin’s fairly often, and they debated on which books were best. Arthur preferred the Watch books, while Merlin thought the Witches books were the best.

“Come on, Vimes is the best! He’s a cynical bastard, but he’s still a good policeman!”

“Vimes doesn’t sing about hedgehogs when he’s drunk!” Merlin retorted.

“No, he lies in the gutter,” Arthur admitted, “But what about Carrot? He’s the King of Ankh-Morpork!”

“There’s no proof of that.”

Arthur snorted. “There’s _every_ proof! The birthmark, the sword…”

“All circumstantial,” Merlin smirked.

Arthur growled at him. “You’re impossible!”

***

Arthur had met Merlin’s flatmate only once, because, as Merlin said, “He’s always out with his girlfriend.” Arthur almost asked if Merlin had a girlfriend, but it was none of his business–and why did he care anyway?

The phone rang one day as he was finishing Men at Arms.

“Hello?”

“Arthur?” Merlin sounded nervous.

“Merlin? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong! I just, I was wondering, maybe you’d…”

“Sometime today, Merlin,” Arthur prompted him.

“D’you want to go for coffee with me?”

Arthur blinked. “Uh…sure. When?”

“Whenever.”

“Well, I’m not doing anything at the moment, you want to go now?”

“Sure! I mean, yeah, I guess.”

Arthur hung up the phone. Merlin was acting weirder than usual. He wondered why he wanted to go out. Usually they just sat at his house and talked. And Merlin had been nervous… He derailed his train of thought before it could go down that track. He liked Merlin, and was perfectly happy with the way things were.

***

Arthur drove over to Merlin’s and they went to a local coffee shop. Arthur ordered a latté and a Danish and Merlin got an iced mocha and a brownie.

Once they sat down, Merlin was fidgety. He tied knots in his straw wrapper until it tore, then started shredding his napkin. Arthur took it from him before he could make a mess, trying to ignore the way their fingers brushed.

“What’s wrong with you today?” he demanded.

“What? Nothing. Huh? Nothing’s wrong!”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “You should have got decaf.”

Merlin smiled, and seemed to relax. They spent some time talking, then drove back to Merlin’s house.

Arthur went in for awhile, keeping the cat from escaping as a matter of course, and sitting down in Merlin’s living room.

Merlin started fidgeting again. “So…”

“So?” Arthur repeated. “Really, Merlin, you’re acting even stranger than usual today!”

“Sorry.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Don’t apologise. I’m just wondering what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on!” Merlin insisted.

Arthur shrugged. If Merlin didn’t want to tell him, he didn’t want to tell him. “Well I guess I’d better get going,” he said slowly.

“Yeah,” Merlin agreed.

Arthur got up and headed for the door. Merlin followed, but on the way, the cat insinuated herself between his legs and he stumbled. Arthur caught him, his hands around his upper arms.

He should really let go now. There was no reason for him to keep holding him, but Merlin’s skin was warm, and his face was so close that Arthur could feel his breath. _His eyes have flecks of gold in them,_ he thought inconsequentially. And suddenly Merlin leaned forward and kissed him.

Arthur was taken aback for a moment, but then surrendered to it, letting Merlin open his mouth.

As they broke apart, Arthur caught sight of the cat.

It looked smug.


End file.
